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Texans have been touting that we are the best for generations. We make the best barbecue, we have the most devoted football fans, and we are the most courageous when choosing foods to deep-fry (deep-fried latte, anyone?). While we may be pretty good at announcing what makes us the best, we actually may not be that good at writing it. Using Correctica, a new tool that scans entire websites for errors grammar checkers don’t catch, we studied the government websites of several southern states to determine which state’s grammar is the best and which is the worst.
We ran a sub-set of each website’s URLs against Correctica’s error database that includes misused idioms, incorrect articles, and commonly confused words or homophones. As Texans we are proud of many things, the results of this study are not one of them.
Texas………………….11%
Tennessee……………6%
Alabama………………5%
Florida………………..4%
Louisiana…………….4%
Mississippi…………..3%
South Carolina……..3%
Arkansas……………..2%
Georgia……………….2%
Kentucky…………….2%
We will bravely admit that Texas had the worst error rate of 11%–nearly twice as much as Tennessee, the state that took the second place spot. Texas’ grammar error rate was six times worse than the states that tied with the best scores: Kentucky, Georgia and Arkansas. [Okay, but how good is their queso?]
Here are some of the errors we found from several of the states:
1) Texas: The misspelling of category is one of the errors we caught on Texas.gov where the website invites users to choose a “catagory.”
(Correct form: category)
http://www.texas.gov/_layouts/viewlsts.aspx?BaseType=0
2) Texas: The right to a concealed handgun may be a popular topic in Texas, but Texas.gov still refers to “an Concealed Handgun License Instructor Certification.”
(Correct form: a concealed)
http://www.texas.gov/en/discover/Pages/topic.aspx?topicid=%2Flicenses%2Fhandguns
3) Tennessee: Tennessee made a “right-of-way” plural by referring to “public right-of-ways” instead of the correct term rights-of-way.
(Correct form: rights-of-way)
4) Louisiana: Offering Green Business Expo exhibitors space on a “first-come, first-serve” would seem very fair to most people, if it didn’t actually imply that the first person to arrive would be the first to serve the rest of the exhibitors. What the Louisiana website intended to explain is that space may be reserved space on a first come, first served basis.
(Correct form: first come, first served)
http://www.deq.louisiana.gov/portal/ABOUT/GreenBusinessExpo/ExhibitorRegistrationForm.aspx
5) Mississippi:
While a big surprise here is Mississippi’s inability to spell surprise, you have to give them credit since the rest of the country still struggles to spell their state’s name correctly.
(Correct form: Surprise)
http://www.mississippi.gov/content/Pages/News.aspx
No matter who you are or where you are from, you may be overlooking embarrassing grammatical errors. Correctica scans websites looking for errors that spell checkers and grammar checkers miss. Try it out at Correctica.com. Also at Correctica.com is “Proof it Free” a free tool for checking blog posts, term papers, resumes… anything.
By Sharon Reynolds, Correctica.com
Photo Credit: Sharon Reynolds
